READING GROUP GUIDE
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
- At one point, Clara claims that: “Families were not as they seemed.…Wasn’t everyone damaged? she asked herself…and concluded that the house of Atreus was, and always had been, full of boarders like herself.” Do you agree with Clara? To what extent is the story of the Maldonadas a universal story?
- The author uses names and naming as an additional literary device in the novel. Can you identify the names that are part of this word game? What does each add to your understanding of the novel?
- In what ways is parenting an important theme in the book? For the Maldonadas, what is the main attribute of the parent-child relation? How does each character respond to this relation?
- What role does money play in the story of the Maldonada family? How does each character respond to the notion of money?
- In her introduction to the book, Andrea Barrett likens the Maldonada family to a Greek tragedy. What “tragic flaw” (or flaws) seem to shape the actions of this family? How does each character respond to it? Is there hope of change or redemption for the Maldonadas?
- Both Clara and Peter appear to be different from the other characters, and to hold a different place in the novel’s structure. Are Clara and Peter witnesses? Participants? A little of both?
- What is Clara’s role in the novel? Is she part of the Maldonada family, or fundamentally different from them?
- What is Peter’s role in the novel? Why do you think Paula Fox gives him such a prominent role toward the end of the book?
- Who would you say is the hero or heroine in this novel? Does this novel have a hero or heroine?
- What role does each character have in the novel, and how does that role change as the story progresses and we find out more about them? How do the characters, in their different roles and places in the novel, interact with each other to create an important statement about the differences between family identity and individual identity?
- One of the main conflicts in the book is the conflict of emotion and restraint. Which characters represent which quality? How does Paula Fox illustrate the expression of emotion? According to your reading of The Widow’s Children, is restraint a positive quality or a negative one?
- In a highly favorable review of The Widow’s Children, Peter S. Prescott wrote in Newsweek that while he greatly admired Paula Fox’s work, he was not always certain he liked it. Can you think of examples from The Widow’s Children which might explain this seeming paradox?
Praise for Paula Fox’s Desperate Characters
“Desperate Characters deserves a second coming more than most books.…Fox’s prose hurts. It’s written on the nerves.”
—Walter Kirn, New York Magazine
“A towering landmark of postwar realism…. A sustained work of prose so lucid and fine that it seems less written than carved.”
—David Foster Wallace
“One of the few novels I’ve quite literally kept near me over the years, to reread regularly…. It’s thrilling to see her book made available again.”
—Rosellen Brown
“Using a merciless camera’s-eye style, Paula Fox…spreads problems before the reader and makes no recommendation…. The skillful insistency with which Miss Fox probes her characters’ lives holds one’s attention.”
—Peter Rowley, New York Times Book Review
“Desperate Characters takes its place in a major American tradition, the line of the short novel exemplified by Billy Budd, The Great Gatsby, Miss Lonelyhearts, and Seize the Day…. Grueling and brilliant.”
—Irving Howe, The New Republic